Analysis: Do we see race through our own lens of culture?

There may be something behind this age-old canard: Science indicates that people can have a hard time differentiating between faces of people whose race is different from their own.

But for black people, being mistaken for someone else can have a special sting, which may explain why movie star Samuel L. Jackson eviscerated a white TV reporter for mistaking him for Laurence Fishburne.

“We may be all black and famous, but we all don’t look alike!” Jackson exclaimed.

He proceeded to ridicule the reporter, refusing to move on despite profuse apologies.

It was a situation that’s familiar to many groups in a diverse society conscious of demographic boxes.

Asian-Americans get confused with people who aren’t even from their ancestral countries. Blondes get mistaken for other blondes who look nothing like them. Straight people accidentally call lesbians the name of the other lesbian they know.

“Americans have been socialized to place people in categories,” said Josie Brown-Rose, an English professor at Western New England University.

“Everything from a job application to a college application requires us to self-identify into racial groups and locate ourselves within a specific collective.”

“Oftentimes when we look at individuals, it is the collective that we see first.”

Scientific studies have identified the “other race effect,” in which people tend to confuse or incorrectly name individuals of other races, said Thomas Busey, an Indiana University psychology professor who studies face recognition.

There are two theories for why this happens, Busey said.

One is that people focus on the wrong physical cues — hair color and texture may be a good way to distinguish white people, for example, but it doesn’t work so well for Asians.

The other theory is that people who have little contact with other races are more likely to think they all look the same.

“If we have less contact with other races, we’re less likely to learn the real cues,” Busey said.

He has fallen victim to the “other race effect” himself: Once, Busey was 20 minutes into a conversation with one of his black students when he realized he thought she was the only other black person in the class. Yet Busey has made the same kind of error with a white student.

Which raises questions about why Jackson reacted so strongly, and whether it was an innocent mistake when TV reporter Sam Rubin confused Jackson with Fishburne.

The two actors share little physical resemblance except for being large African-Americans with a gap between their front teeth.

Did Rubin really think Jackson, known for his hard edge and foul mouth, was Fishburne, whose persona is more Shakespearean?

Despite Rubin’s apologies on air and then online for what he himself called a “very amateur mistake,” it’s easy for some to see race as the reason.

Black people must navigate white environments far more often than whites find themselves surrounded by non-whites, so it can feel like black people get misidentified more often.

“I could understand where Sam gets mad at this,” said Mark Anthony Neal, an African-American studies professor at Duke University who focuses on pop culture.

A winter that has brought colder-than-normal temperatures and more snow than in recent years has not only caused a nuisance for people throughout Indiana County but for local public works departments as well.

Dave Fairman, Indiana Borough director of public works, said the borough was completely out of road salt as of Friday. His crews are down to anti-skid material only.